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Re: Traffic Hording?
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Packet #1 is a standard info beacon with a position.? That really should happen no quicker than every 10 minutes and realistically, can come far less often.. say every 30min.? Packet #2 is the the beginning of a set of telemetry packets.? Consider these the column titles for the rest of the telemetry data.? Packet #3 are the units for those columns.? The rest is the various data.? The more often you send it, the more resolution you have in the data but one needs to question do they need that much resolution.? I would argue NO. You can see a graphical depiction of that data here: Btw.. if this location is correct.. it seems that the INDMT node has some decent elevation which helps in all respects for distance, more packet decodes, etc. -- OK and understood on both counts It's not a competition. I just have to wonder why my iGate is not catching traffic that is closer than the other iGate. Those you have all already gone over. It was more or less basically, "What am I doing wrong?". Redundancy is great, for sure! As for my internet, I have high speed cable internet, 2 modems, 200x20 each and soon I'll have 1,000/1,000 fiber along with 2 modems to ensure up time, currently load balanced, later will be failover. The two modem are basically for troubleshooting purposes between the cable company and I. For my router I'm running PfSense on a A1SRi-2758. This may likely change to a higher performance machine in later days as it'll just barely handle the up coming 1Gb. Not that I'll be using all that bandwidth but I'd rather the internet be the bottle neck, not my router. Ping times vary between about 9 and 30ms but one modem does have some periodic but minute packet loss we haven't been able to figure out. Regarding the 440 or BBS stuff, I'll look into that. That would be handy. Regarding filters, the only issue I've noticed is my antennas are too close together. Something I'll need to remedy in the future as the iGate de-senses my 706 on 2M and the 706 will de-sense the iGate. Something to be expected but I don't use my desk radio too often, just every now and then. Regarding the TXDELAY, yea, I understand what it's for. Basically to allow the transmitter to trigger and stabilize prior to actual activity. I went ahead and pulled out the "/3". The only thing running on that machine is a GUI, Direwolf and a KISS interface, that's it's whole purpose in life at the moment. I'm perfectly content with some extra CPU usage and I'm not worried about heat as all Pis I put to use have a big solid aluminum heatsink. Under normal conditions they can't overheat, I've tried purposefully just to see if they could. OK, well thank you everyone for your input. I'm glad to have a better configuration running on the iGate which should serve this area better than it was. Now to get the iGate up north working that should already be working but that's another story. |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
Lynn Deffenbaugh
On 5/8/2022 8:38 PM, Dana Myers wrote:
I'm not as familiar with the scheme APRS-IS uses to select a TxGate, but I'm pretty sure itThe APRS-IS doesn't "select" a TxGate.? The APRS-IS servers keep track of what stations were received via every connected IGate.? Any message addressed to any of those stations that were "recently" heard, will be sent to ALL connected IGates that heard that station.? A subsequent "courtesy" posit from the message-originating station will follow as well.? Each individual IGate decides to put the message and posit through to RF based on its own configuration.? There is no "intelligence" or "routing" in the APRS-IS network, and IGates aren't "selected" by anything.? Each IGate decides what to transmit based on its own implementation and without any knowledge of any other IGate. Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - Author of APRSISCE for Windows Mobile and Win32 |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
开云体育Hello Patrick, The station in question is KW7JOE. He broadcasts every 5 minutes Packet #1 is a standard info beacon with a position.? That really should happen no quicker than every 10 minutes and realistically, can come far less often.. say every 30min.? Packet #2 is the the beginning of a set of telemetry packets.? Consider these the column titles for the rest of the telemetry data.? Packet #3 are the units for those columns.? The rest is the various data.? The more often you send it, the more resolution you have in the data but one needs to question do they need that much resolution.? I would argue NO.? You can see a graphical depiction of that data here:?? Btw.. if this location is correct.. it seems that the INDMT node has some decent elevation which helps in all respects for distance, more packet decodes, etc. ??? The problem is that the station that is 60 miles away is getting the traffic via our digipeater vs my iGate which is 15 miles away. As other have described, it shouldn't really be a "competition" but I understand your perspective.? Two things I should have mentioned before: ?? - I've found that Direwolf isn't the faster decoder.? I bet with disabling the FIX_BITS option, that might speed things up a little ?? - A Raspberry Pi isn't the fastest computer either.? You could throw more CPU power at it and it might help but you have to question why it would matter ?? - What is your Internet connection like?? Very generally speaking, the faster it is.. the lower the serialization delays thus "lower the ping times".? If you're looking to get to the APRS-IS network the fastest, every little bit helps ??? Regarding APRS on 440, I'll have to start a new topic on that. I didn't realize it wasn't that common on 440, so it may not be worth looking into. Really I hadn't given it much thought other than, "Maybe people might like some 440 coverage?", and good to know on the tuning. I'll be sure to get with another operator I know that has some bench equipment for proper tuning, if and when I do it. I don't know if there are any "packet clubs" in your area of Idaho but if there is, you might see if there is much interest or if it's been tried before.? I'm not saying there isn't a benefit here but the propogation of 2m is far better than 70cm.? Instead, maybe consider setting up a packet BBS with some cool features like CONVERS chat, WW messaging, etc. ??? I am constantly doing updates and tuning on the iGate but the digipeater is off the grid. I do think we're going to have to go pull it, do some more tuning and updates this summer but it's best that I know what I need to do now before I actually go grab it. If the digipeater is off grid (no internet), there is very little risk.? If it works.. don't touch it. ??? I am curious if you have a list of recommended hardening? I know a couple thing I do is noatime, nodtime, enabling more memory pressure and there's another app I use that pre-loads common applications into memory to reduce SD card writes. On my desktop it's almost reduced writes to nothing. Every time I do a trim, it trims 0 unless I've been deleting files. Section 6 - 11 for sure:? ??? No duplexers, no filters, any suggestions? If I can keep the signals clean, I'm game! Not always required for "quiet sites but it can help your radio with avoiding being swamped by nearby signals, etc.? Look on Ebay and other sites for say a 4 cavity 2m duplexer set.? They aren't cheap though. ??? TXDELAY 15 believe it or not was working, at least locally, but I went ahead and set it back to 20 to be safe. This is only important for TRANSMITTING so it won't help your receive "performance" ??? I can shoot the other station a email to let him know but I doubt a beacon every 5 minutes isn't deliberate, he's likely transmitting it for his own logs though it's getting 60+ miles out. --David KI6ZHD |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
On 5/8/2022 2:34 PM, Patrick wrote:
I do not understand what you're concerned about. In the RF-to-APRSIS direction, the so-called RxGate direction, the more, the merrier. APRS-IS handles duplicate traffic by design. Just because a station is forwarding frames from RF to APRSIS doesn't stop any other station from doing so. Regarding APRS-IS to RF, I was pretty much letting the server decide what goes out and so far as I can see nothing goes out that hasn't already been sent in and that is GOOD! I don't want misc unrelated traffic blowing up the area and jamming the local network.I'm not as familiar with the scheme APRS-IS uses to select a TxGate, but I'm pretty sure it favors a TxGate with the shortest path (fewest digis) based on observed traffic. 73, Dana? K6JQ |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
OK, I'm going to try and answer everyone...
Andrew P., ??? I agree with your statement about iGates. The station in question is KW7JOE. He broadcasts every 5 minutes May 08 13:11:57 APRS-iGate direwolf[2626]: [ig>tx] INDMT>APMI06,TCPIP*,qAS,KW7JOE:@082011z4722.91N/11642.10W# KW7JOE 12.1V, 48.7DEG. OFFGRID SOLAR, WX3in1 May 08 13:12:37 APRS-iGate direwolf[2626]: [ig>tx] INDMT>APMI06,TCPIP*,qAS,KW7JOE::INDMT :PARM.Vin,Rx1h,Dg1h,Eff1h,Temp,O1,O2,O3,O4,I1,I2,I3,I4 May 08 13:12:37 APRS-iGate direwolf[2626]: [ig>tx] INDMT>APMI06,TCPIP*,qAS,KW7JOE::INDMT :UNIT.Volt,Pkt,Pkt,Pcnt,Deg,On,On,On,On,Hi,Hi,Hi,Hi May 08 13:12:37 APRS-iGate direwolf[2626]: [ig>tx] INDMT>APMI06,TCPIP*,qAS,KW7JOE::INDMT :EQNS.0,0.075,0,0,10,0,0,10,0,0,1,0,0,0,0 May 08 13:12:37 APRS-iGate direwolf[2626]: [ig>tx] INDMT>APMI06,TCPIP*,qAS,KW7JOE::INDMT :BITS.11111111,WX3in1Plus20 Telemetry May 08 13:12:47 APRS-iGate direwolf[2626]: [ig>tx] INDMT>APMI06,TCPIP*,qAS,KW7JOE:T#163,162,009,005,053,146,00000000 Granted, it may be very well nothing he's done but traffic from my area, in a valley is hitting the digipeater that a buddy of mine put up to fill the area due to lack of coverage (at the time), then going to another digipeater then out his iGate 60 miles away. I'm not sure when he put up his iGate but at the time we put ours in there wasn't anything in the area. N7ISP was set in such a manner to only cover the north as it can't see south but this was purposefully as the Coeur d'Alene area has it's own iGates and doesn't need a digipeater. The two digipeaters in question are N7ISP-10 and INDMT. Now I don't know about INDMT but N7ISP-10 is a stand alone digipeater with no internet which is why my buddy and I got together to put up a iGate at my location 15 miles north. Patrick Conner, ??? Understood and set. I'll post the modified config at the bottom. I welcome constructive criticism :) Rob Giuliano, ??? Yes, basically regarding winning the APRS-IS server race and you bring up some good points regarding networking, DNS, ect. ??? I won't go into all the networking tid-bit but I don't use my ISP servers, I use DNS over TLS and my router is pointed to multiple DNS servers and has a DNS cache though I do have a filter that reloads from time to time so I may have some network tuning to do. ??? I agree, it shouldn't be a competition, my problem with it is he's 60 miles away and is somehow pulling traffic from this area which negates the point of why we put the iGate up in the first place. At that time there was nothing and yes, good consistent coverage is more important for sure, redundancy is also very good but packets should be going to the closest iGate (15 miles) not the furthest (60 miles) unless that local iGate is non-responsive, then it should go to whichever is available. My concern is mostly RF to APRS-IS. There is not much traffic in my area but at the same time I don't want to miss anyone or anything but I also don't want to be pulling coverage from an area that doesn't need it. Regarding APRS-IS to RF, I was pretty much letting the server decide what goes out and so far as I can see nothing goes out that hasn't already been sent in and that is GOOD! I don't want misc unrelated traffic blowing up the area and jamming the local network. John Huggins, ??? Yea, just disabled that. I'm still learning David Ranch, ??? You're always very clear and precise in your message and I thank you VERY much for that! Well and your replies, MUCH appreciated!!! ??? The station in question was mentioned above. Hopefully that clears things up. ??? If I recall the antenna isn't 3db, I want to say it's 6 but I will go get the model number and double check and adjust accordingly as soon as I get outside. ??? The problem is that the station that is 60 miles away is getting the traffic via our digipeater vs my iGate which is 15 miles away. ??? Regarding APRS on 440, I'll have to start a new topic on that. I didn't realize it wasn't that common on 440, so it may not be worth looking into. Really I hadn't given it much thought other than, "Maybe people might like some 440 coverage?", and good to know on the tuning. I'll be sure to get with another operator I know that has some bench equipment for proper tuning, if and when I do it. ??? I am VERY interested in the scripts, shoot away! ??? I am constantly doing updates and tuning on the iGate but the digipeater is off the grid. I do think we're going to have to go pull it, do some more tuning and updates this summer but it's best that I know what I need to do now before I actually go grab it. ??? I am curious if you have a list of recommended hardening? I know a couple thing I do is noatime, nodtime, enabling more memory pressure and there's another app I use that pre-loads common applications into memory to reduce SD card writes. On my desktop it's almost reduced writes to nothing. Every time I do a trim, it trims 0 unless I've been deleting files. ??? No duplexers, no filters, any suggestions? If I can keep the signals clean, I'm game! ??? TXDELAY 15 believe it or not was working, at least locally, but I went ahead and set it back to 20 to be safe. ??? As for the IGTXLIMIT, no there is not a lot of traffic in my area but I don't want to hinder traffic either. ??? As for the reports, how are you getting a daily report? I'm very interested! ??? I can shoot the other station a email to let him know but I doubt a beacon every 5 minutes isn't deliberate, he's likely transmitting it for his own logs though it's getting 60+ miles out. I adjusted my config, constructive criticism always welcome! ARATE 48000 ADEVICE? plughw:2,0 CHANNEL 0 MYCALL KD7WPQ-10 MODEM 1200 E+ /3 PTT CM108 TXDELAY 20 SLOTTIME 10 PERSIST 63 AGWPORT 0 KISSPORT 8001 #FIX_BITS 1 AX25 CBEACON dest="MORSE-10" info="de KD7WPQ" #IGMSP 0 IGSERVER noam.aprs2.net IGLOGIN (Redacted) PBEACON delay=21 every=10 overlay=S symbol="igate" lat=48^18.31N long=116^31.47W PHG3160/WIDE comment="Ponderay, ID iGate" PBEACON sendto=IG delay=0:30 every=10:00 symbol="igate" overlay=T lat=48^18N long=116^31W IBEACON delay=0:10 every=10:00 VIA=WIDE1-1 symbol="igate" overlay=T lat=48^18N long=116^31W IGFILTER m/48 FILTER d/N7ISP-10 s/-> #IGTXVIA 0 WIDE1-1 #IGTXVIA 1 KD7WPQ #IGTXVIA 0 IGTXLIMIT 6 5 |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
开云体育Hello Patrick,
The answers from Andrew, Patrick C, Rob, and John all have excellent points but I had a few final thoughts too: ?? - You don't mention which station is doing the "hording" so it's difficult to give you more ideas ?? - How well does your station hear these other client APRS stations?? I see your KD7WPQ-10 station is on the northern shore of a lake but you're surrounded by mountains to the east and west.? Those mountains are going to create some level of RF reflections which might be creating some decoding challenges for your station ?? - 50 miles is a LONG way for many packets to reach your station.? Unless those remote APRS client stations are transmitting with good antennas and some real power, your station probably won't be able to decode many of the packets.? This would be the #1 reason of why the other APRS client stations reporting into the "hording" station
That's a bit of the nature of APRS in general.? It's a lossy network so and packet loss will be expected even in the best conditions but with future beacons, position packets, etc. coming later, people should be able to get a clear picture of what's going on in a given area.
APRS on 70cm isn't very common but it's worth a try.? Is there a coordinated frequency in your area for APRS on 70cm?? Btw... if you're thinking about 9600bps FSK APRS, I would recommend you read: ?? Yes.. it's faster but it's also a much more sensitive data mode requiring some real tuning to work (at all).
This is a great plan when done right.? Try to avoid overlapping coverage areas (PHG circles if you will) by simulating the RF propagation for a given area.? That takes time and it's not easy but a well thought out design will go a long ways.
Well.. As you've seen in the other comments, it's not entirely up to you.? Even if you ultimately come up and an excellent design for say "classic digipeater network", other people can plop down their own digipeaters and somewhat screw things up.? What I would also recommend is to monitor the APRS traffic and see if you have some stations that are "over beaconing" and saturating the network due to drifty GPS receivers, etc.? I have some scripts here to help if you're interested.
If these are all Raspberry PI + Direwolf based, I hope you're building these for the long haul including SD card write hardening, some sort of battery backup, remote power cycle support, etc.? If many of these stations are Internet enabled Igates, make sure you're patching and rebooting the OS on a regular cadence.? If the OS is EOL, it's time to upgrade to continue getting updates.? If you don't do ALL these things, you will be doing a LOT of on-site support on these nodes.
Sounds good.? What antennas?? Any duplexers to keep the signal clean in/out of the antenna? Regarding your Direwolf AX.25 settings, changing your settings to be more aggressive will only DAMAGE the overall performance of the network.? Please don't do that unless the entire RF APRS is aligned to the more aggressive timers. This isn't a valid PHG level for power.? Please see for valid values. Are you really only using a 3db gain antenna?? If so, consider using a better gain but still inexpensive antenna like a 6.5dbi Diamond CP22E antenna Don't use WIDE2-1 unless you really need it.? You're only contributing to the congestion of the network Sending to WIDE2-1 might be ok when you're first starting out and there isn't much of a network operating.? As things are to get rolling using WIDE2 will hurt the scaling of the network.? Per the above URL, it consisely says: ?? 2& = TX igate with path set to 2 hops (not generally good idea)
Do you know if this rate limiter is impacting your station (check your direwolf logs)?? If you're in a busy area, 10 packets in 5 minutes is not a lot and might need to be tuned but please don't outright disable it. --David KI6ZHD |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
This brings up a question: Are you concerned with traffic from APRS-IS to RF, or (as most users are concerned) with RF to APRS-IS servers? APRS-IS to RF depends are the RF to APRS-IS.? The server tends to use the return path. Robert Giuliano
On Sunday, May 8, 2022, 10:21:54 AM EDT, Patrick Connor via groups.io <n3tsz@...> wrote:
I notice that you do not have any filters set. You must include a line beginning with IGFILTER to tell the APRSIS server what information you want sent to your Igate. Consult section 9.10 of the user guide and an accompanying document titled Successful Igate operation.? ? Good luck and 73 de Patrick (N3TSZ)
On Sunday, May 8, 2022, 03:23:56 AM EDT, Patrick <kd7wpq@...> wrote:
There's a station about 65 miles from my position, about 50 miles from our digipeater position that seems to somehow be hording all the iGate traffic. |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 10:22 AM Rob Giuliano via <kb8rco=[email protected]> wrote:
Error correction?? AX.25 UI Frames underpinning APRS over the air are about as "spray and pray" and one can get.? |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
I am not sure what you mean by "Traffic Hording" . Are you referring to his station "always winning the race to an APRS-IS server"? This should NOT be a competition to 'most packets posted on APRS-IS'. The imnportant point is good consistent coverage. There are only a few factors that influence this: 1. First to receive ??? Closer to the transmitting station is typically 'first to receive' as the RF reaches it first. ??? Most often intermediate DIGIs would be the largest factor here.? So literally, closest (no DIGI required) would win. ? ? ?? In most cases, this is related to highest, or most coverage area. ??? >>> Another factor here
is overlapping DIGI coverage.? If the TX hits several DIGIpeaters and ?????????? is
retransmitted over the same area, thos in the overlap area may get interference from the others and ?????????? miss part of the packet 2. Quickness to decode ??? If a station is slow to decode (error correction may be a factor), this may give another station time to win the race. ??? However, the error corrcection may make the more packets availble quicker to the APRS-IS server. ??? So you would win when the closer stations doesn't get a clean packet. 3. Internet access to the APRS-IS server(s)?? a) ISP speed at the IGATE site is probably the biggest factor. ?? b) DNS servers used by your provider and DNS settings may influence how fast they resolve the APRS-IS server. ?????? EXAMPLE: you send noam.aprs2.net and the DNS server sends back an IP address for one of the 'pool' servers. ?? a) Since most clients use a 'pool' address for APRS-IS, it is hard to ensure you have the shortest route to an APRS-IS server. ?????? There are some network settings that may help this, but I have never tried to optrimize this. As far as "too busy" is concerned, any IGATE is almost defintely RF limited.? If the data is on RF and heard, it can be IGATEd. Robert Giuliano
On Sunday, May 8, 2022, 03:23:56 AM EDT, Patrick <kd7wpq@...> wrote:
There's a station about 65 miles from my position, about 50 miles from our digipeater position that seems to somehow be hording all the iGate traffic. |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
I notice that you do not have any filters set. You must include a line beginning with IGFILTER to tell the APRSIS server what information you want sent to your Igate. Consult section 9.10 of the user guide and an accompanying document titled Successful Igate operation.? ? Good luck and 73 de Patrick (N3TSZ)
On Sunday, May 8, 2022, 03:23:56 AM EDT, Patrick <kd7wpq@...> wrote:
There's a station about 65 miles from my position, about 50 miles from our digipeater position that seems to somehow be hording all the iGate traffic. |
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Re: Traffic Hording?
There is no "redirection" of traffic. If your I-gate heard it, you sent it to the APRS-IS backbone too, as a redundant copy, and the backbone filters out duplicates. Is the traffic supposedly being "hoarded" by this I-gate a direct path to that I-gate, whereas it is a one-hop digipeat to yours? In that case, it makes perfect sense: the _local_ I-gate is forwarding the traffic from its first transmission rather than having to wait for it to be (unreliably) digipeated to a remote I-gate somewhere else. Furthermore, if the sender is using proportional pathing, not all of their packets might be digipeated anyway (because they won't request being digipeated in their paths). The point of multiple I-gates is failure redundancy, not load-balancing. The RF load is where it is, and adding more receiving I-gates somewhere else won't change the local RF load.
Frankly, if any one I-gate can't handle the full traffic from a saturated 1200-baud RF channel, it's a pretty sad excuse for an I-gate, because that's just not that much traffic (an old-style 9600-baud dialup modem could handle the Internet connection for that much traffic with bandwidth to spare). Andrew, KA2DDO ________________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Patrick <kd7wpq@...> Sent: Sunday, May 8, 2022 3:23 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [direwolf] Traffic Hording? There's a station about 65 miles from my position, about 50 miles from our digipeater position that seems to somehow be hording all the iGate traffic. I'm about 15 miles from our digipeater My issue with it is a couple things... - I setup a iGate in the area because there was no coverage in the area at the time. - He's pulling enough traffic that it's quite possible if things got busy enough that his iGate wouldn't be able to handle the load and if that ends up being the case then users suffer My question is, how can I tune my iGate to respond properly and fast enough to negate the point of traffic in the area being redirected to another area so far away and optimize the local APRS experience for all users? Currently I'm running 2M, I plan to change this to include 440 in coming months or days. A fellow ham and I have been working on getting coverage in the area and splitting the areas in such a manner that we hope to never see more traffic than any one iGate can ever handle there by potentially providing the best user experience possible. Granted we're new to APRS but that doesn't mean we're not trying or am I just being vein? My fellow ham put up a digipeater about a year or more ago and we've been putting up iGates to fill in the uncovered areas My iGate consists of a Rasberry Pi 3B, a CMedia sound fob, PTT is triggered via the CMedia's GPIO pin to a commercial Kenwood which has been repurposed for APRS use. My config is as follows (I'm cutting out the stock information) ARATE 48000 ADEVICE plughw:2,0 CHANNEL 0 MYCALL KD7WPQ-10 MODEM 1200 E+ /3 PTT CM108 TXDELAY 15 SLOTTIME 1 PERSIST 33 AGWPORT 8000 KISSPORT 8001 FIX_BITS 1 AX25 CBEACON dest="MORSE-10" info="de KD7WPQ" IGMSP 0 IGSERVER noam.aprs2.net IGLOGIN (Redacted) PBEACON delay=21 every=10 overlay=S symbol="igate" lat=48^18.N long=116^31.W power=5 height=20 gain=3 comment="Ponderay, ID iGate" PBEACON sendto=IG delay=0:30 every=10:00 symbol="igate" overlay=T lat=48^18.N long=116^31.W IBEACON delay=0:01 every=10:00 VIA=WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 symbol="igate" overlay=T lat=48^18.N long=116^31.W IGTXVIA 0 WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 IGTXLIMIT 6 10 |
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Traffic Hording?
There's a station about 65 miles from my position, about 50 miles from our digipeater position that seems to somehow be hording all the iGate traffic. |
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Re: Headaches with direwolf + linpac
开云体育Hello Neil, The MFJ-1274 failed.? At some point I couldn't get anything over the serial port anymore.? But before the MFJ-1274 died, I did several communication tests and was satisfied that everything was working. Bummer though hopefully that can be fixed since those old TNC2 units are so flexible.? It might just be the RS232 drivers on it. On the local digipeaters, I've tried all of the ssid's without success. Yeah.. maybe once you get some more power and maybe a directional antenna (2m tape measurer yagis work really well), you'll have better luck.? What packet terminal program were you using to do the tests?? Was that the MFJ unit before it died? I've glanced through the linpac source code already.? I like the design.? Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to debug into the program and figure out where the yapp transfer breaks.? Rain is on the way.? So no yard mowing. Duh.. sorry.. I was a bit distracted when I wrote that last email.? YAPP does work but it's operation is a intermittent.? I did some deeper analysis some time ago and wrote it all down. --David KI6ZHD |
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Re: Headaches with direwolf + linpac
Neil H. Gray
On 5/5/22 14:57, David Ranch wrote:
My first radio that I attached to the AEA PK-900 was a Kenwood TR-2500 handheld just because it was handy. My second radio was a Kenwood TM-241a. Both radios seemed to work the same way.? The outcoming audio was just really low from the AEA PK-900.? I could hear a little bit by ear, but could never get a decoded packet. I tried the MFJ tnc next and was thankful that the cable connection was identical to the PK-900. The MFJ-1274 failed.? At some point I couldn't get anything over the serial port anymore.? But before the MFJ-1274 died, I did several communication tests and was satisfied that everything was working.Was it the pk900 or the MFJ1274 TNC that failed? And then there is stuff that still doesn't work.? I cannot connect to some of the local digipeaters even though the operators of those stations have assured me that they accept connections. I'm going to have a chance to meet some of them in person soon. I'll get to the bottom of this.Are you trying every different possible SSID when trying to create a connected session?? It's tedious and takes time but it's the only way to really know. On the local digipeaters, I've tried all of the ssid's without success. On the APRS I've given up searching for working ssid's because my current setup isn't great, and the closest station is 38 miles away and can barely hear me.? I should be able to get a better setup soon.? It's just a 1/2 wave mag mount on a slanted metal roof ~15' off the ground. I've recently moved and had to give up some good antennas and have not been able to erect anything permanent.? Inflation is killing the budget for new antennas at the moment.Maybe I have badly estimated what 5W can deliver on packet radio.I would say your first priority should be what kind of antenna you're using (ideally a quality gain antenna), how high up is it located, minimize RF loss through the transmission line (use the shortest length of low loss coax).? After that, 5 watts can work but it's not ideal.? If possible, try to run at least 20-25 watts to create full quieting signals to override any on-frequency noise, override other distant hidden packet nodes, etc. Ha.. that would be me and I saw your post about YACC file transfers.? I need to reply there but there is some known issues there on YACC. If I remember correctly, the AutoBin approach works ok. I've glanced through the linpac source code already.? I like the design.? Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to debug into the program and figure out where the yapp transfer breaks.? Rain is on the way.? So no yard mowing. I thought YACC was a C compiler.? In the linpac manual the file transfer is always called YAPP. |
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Re: Headaches with direwolf + linpac
开云体育Hello Neil, a. The transmit level of the pk900 is messed up.? It's too low, and the calibration procedure in the manual doesn't work. What radio are you using here?? This is sometimes the the radio's fault as some radios require a lot more drive than TNCs are able to provide.? Some radios have a user configurable INPUT gain setting but can only be set via a Windows program (Kenwood v71).? Your radio also might have different audio input paths (direct input, pre/post-emphasis, etc) so try that.? The last idea could be to create a small amplification stage to help increase the level.? There are lots of ideas on the repeater-builder.com site.
Was it the pk900 or the MFJ1274 TNC that failed? And then there is stuff that still doesn't work.? I cannot connect to some of the local digipeaters even though the operators of those stations have assured me that they accept connections. I'm going to have a chance to meet some of them in person soon. I'll get to the bottom of this. Are you trying every different possible SSID when trying to create a connected session?? It's tedious and takes time but it's the only way to really know.? Maybe I have badly estimated what 5W can deliver on packet radio. I would say your first priority should be what kind of antenna you're using (ideally a quality gain antenna), how high up is it located, minimize RF loss through the transmission line (use the shortest length of low loss coax).? After that, 5 watts can work but it's not ideal.? If possible, try to run at least 20-25 watts to create full quieting signals to override any on-frequency noise, override other distant hidden packet nodes, etc. Maybe the old tnc hardware needs a very strong signal to decode direwolf. Absolutely.. they need both good, strong signals but they also usually MUST have the proper signal levels on the two tones.? Legacy TNC like the MFJ units do NOT deal well with incorrectly pre-emphsized signals caled "twist".? Read up on that here: ?? ?? /g/direwolf/topic/alsaloop_for_multimode/86155161?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate/sticky,,,20,0,0,86155161,previd=1634510875111696413,nextid=1632149908223699678&previd=1634510875111696413&nextid=1632149908223699678 ? But I can play with packet radio just through my own nearby stations for now.? There are some new features(at least new compared to 1992 when I last used packet radio) that I can test. In addition of the great decode performance, check out FX.25 which can dramatically improve the reliability of 300bps HF packet. I appreciate the outpouring of help.? Now I'm going to go bug the guys at the linpac sourceforge site over a few issues.? Regardless of what help they might offer they're not going to be as cool of a bunch as you guys on the direwolf forum(unless of course they also frequent the direwolf forum). Ha.. that would be me and I saw your post about YACC file transfers.? I need to reply there but there is some known issues there on YACC.? If I remember correctly, the AutoBin approach works ok. --David KI6ZHD |
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Re: LoRa APRS & DW
开云体育On 5/3/2022 8:15 PM, Jon Adams wrote:
I do not believe you can use Direwolf as an APRS client for a standalone KISS TNC. I have experimented with LoRa myself, at one point I actually ran APRS in the field. My client radio was a SparkX Pro RF 1W board running homegrown KISS firmware on the SAMD21 MCU. Pretty sure I was running APRX in a odroid C1 for the APRS part. At home - only about 80' above sea level but looking across flat marshland to one direction - I had a Larsen 5dBi groundplane hanging in an upstairs window with a Feather 32U4 LoRa hanging on the antenna pigtail, also running custom KISS firmware to, IIRC, APRS-IS but I can't remember for sure. Antenna on the car was a little mag mount of dubious gain. Nonetheless I tracked out across marshland a good 7-8 miles. Later tests, not using APRS, with the same radios saw reliable coverage 40km across flat land to a bridge about 200' above sea level. These tests were generally done with BW 125kHz and SF 7 or 8 IIRC. I'll have to dig up the experimental code at some point. I did specifically avoid the LoRaWAN channels here in US915; we do have pervasive SmartMeters, a mesh network on 915MHz running 1W with short data packets (despite being short, the density of meters in neighborhood means you frequently see pings on the waterfall). Since then I've had multiple LoRaWAN gateways installed on hilltop sites for actual LoRaWAN operation, and, with good LoS paths, see 15km+ paths to fixed barefoot (+20dBm max) devices (motes) in the field, using 2-5dBi antennas. LoRaWAN's Adaptive Data Rate generally reduces transmit power in the field motes to +10dBm. You might be interested in Dan Fay KG5VBY research with higher-power LoRa: 73, Dana? K6JQ |
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Re: LoRa APRS & DW
开云体育Hello Jon,I have a node set up at my house, on an antenna in the window, and it connects just fine via USB to APRSIS32 running on a Windows 7 box. It presents as a KISS serial modem. I have the LoRA radio set up for approximately 1100 baud to maximize the range. Like you and others have discussed, it'd be great to plug at least one of these into a RPi running direwolf, and get "cross-band" connectivity. Couldn't I set up direwolf to recognize a kiss connection from a serial port within the same RPi, and pass packets between the LoRA radio and the radio natively connected to direwolf? This won't work as Direwolf an KISS TNCs effectively create duplicate functionality.? There is no way to decouple the APRS stack from the KISS-TNC functionality in Direwolf.? Instead, consider using some alternative APRS applications under Windows that support a KISS TNC such as: ?? - APRSIS32 ?? - YACC ?? - etc --David KI6ZHD |
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Re: Add Bluetooth…
开云体育Indeed! ?Added AX.25 also. ?I’d love to have a packet terminal and WinLink client for iOS. ?I have an Apple developer account and wish I had the entire skill set to put something like that together, but chipping away at it.Have a good one. 13 Pro Max On May 1, 2022, at 11:26 PM, Craig, KM6LYW <craig@...> wrote:
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Re: Add Bluetooth…
开云体育Ok. Thanks. ?I didn’t even consider SPP vs BLE, but yeah - I have it going now and it’s working great.Using the Fe-Pi board on the RPi02W definitely works a treat. ?May put another one together too. ?I use them at home, cars, and even have had them on my person while skydiving before, lol. Have a good day…! 13 Pro Max On May 1, 2022, at 10:09 PM, Lynn Deffenbaugh <kj4erj@...> wrote:
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Re: Other Stations don't decode
开云体育Hello Patrick, > No idea, I didn't even know how to pull the data from the devices to figure that out, so thank you! There are other ways to do this but that one line is easy to run >Yes, I do have two of this connected to this machine. One for my 857 and one for the 300DR Ah.. ok. >48000 sample rate gave me the following... >Dire Wolf DEVELOPMENT version 1.7 E (May? 1 2022) >Includes optional support for:? gpsd hamlib cm108-ptt > >Reading config file direwolf.conf >Audio device for both receive and transmit: plughw:CARD=CODEC,DEV=0? (channel 0) >Channel 0: 1200 baud, AFSK 1200 & 2200 Hz, A+, 48000 sample rate. <--------------------------- This is selecting the "A+" modem I think this is your issue.? For some reason, Direwolf is selecting the "A+" modem and not the "should be default E+" modem.? See page 67 of the Direwolf User Guide but try out the following line while using a sampling rate of 48000: -- MODEM 1200 E+ -- >Interestingly enough 48000 worked for some reason this time. I've tried it before and it didn't. >Got a 100% response That's not good. >44100 on the other hand is attached as a wave file recorded from my iGate using FLDigi, it decoded once out of many tries. >The iGate is using a CMedia sound fob Those don't sound like complete packets for sure.? There is also a "ticking" sound your signal that isn't good.? You need to make sure you find what's causing that. >Ahh, good to know, but how do I disable support for gpsd? >As I'm just using direwolf as a TNC in this case I don't need it enabled but I'll add it to my notes in case I ever need to recompile and add it back in. This needs more research but I think it would be at compile time but this doesn't seem to be disabling things as I would expect: ?? cmake .. -DGPSD_FOUND=FALSE Alternatively, you can follow my other Direwolf build guide to update the required Direwolf header file to recognize your newer libgps API version.? It's very simple to do: ?? --> Follow section 24.B >Adjusted! >I'll give it some testing later on but 20 sounds nice, there's not a lot of lag between key up and actual packet sending and decoding was working well. 100% success. Only small issue I see is I can't seem to get my audio level below >about 70 to 80. Any lower and the pot on the SCU-17 goes quiet and adjusting it via alsamixer does nothing. Setting your TXDELAY should have nothing to do with your incoming audio levels.? Regardless, I would assume since the SCU-17 has knobs on the front of it, you would need to adjust the RX level there and any digitally configured mixer settings would be ignored.? Is that not the case and BOTH methods of changing both the receive and transmit audio levels works? >I'm content with /1. This machine is perfectly capable and is capable of running Windows 10 in a virtual environment while running everything else. Sure it slows a small bit but nothing that bothers me >Between being a quad core 3.2Ghz w/HT and 32GB of RAM it should be fine >Think I should add E+ or since it's default I presume it's assumed? See above but YES... I think there is an issue with the default modem selection in the current Direwolf 1.7 code.? Another user was seeing a similar when using 300bps HF packet as well. >Wow, that's a heck of a guide! >Looks like I've got some reading to do. I can't say I'll read it all right now but I am saving it to PDF for reference offline. >Thanks a ton! Though focused on a Raspberry Pi, it really doesn't matter and since you're using a Debian based Linux distribution, most everything should work.?? If you were using an RPM based distribution, you can see my older guide which has a LOT more chapters in it covering a LOT more amateur radio program topics: ?? --David KI6ZHD |
Patrick Connor